Discipline

It is called grit, and it is an important factor linked to success. According to psychologist Angela Duckworth, who addressed the topic in a 2013 TED Talk, “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”

TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Biological bases of human behavior, Cognition, Development, Social

Introduction

Dietary restrictions aside, which would you prefer, a cookie right now or two cookies later on?

In a well-known test of willpower, school children faced that very question. In 1970, Walter Mischel tested nursery school children's ability to delay gratification. In his experiment children sat alone in a room without distractions while a marshmallow sat on a table in front of them. The children were told that they could eat the marshmallow immediately but if they waited until after the adult left the room and then returned in a short while (15 minutes) they could have a second marshmallow. The children could also ring a bell to summon the adult before they returned and then consume the treat immediately and relinquish the reward. Of the more than 600 school children tested, most attempted to delay gratification for a second treat but only a third were successful at waiting the full 15 minutes for the reward of the second marshmallow.

The ability to use willpower and exercise self-control in the short term for the sake of long-term goals is widely seen as one important factor in long-term success. Duckworth led a team of psychologists that studied a variety of people in many different settings from military cadets and at-risk high school students to salespeople and national spelling bee competitors. The single question: in each of these different settings who is most likely to succeed? An important predictor of success over and above good looks, health, family income, standardized test scores, and even intelligence was grit. Success also depends on other factors, including ability, opportunity, family support, and the setting in which a person works.

Self-control is like a muscle

Muscles are the ropes that mobilize the pulleys of our joints and power our skeletal structure. They respond to the brain in both voluntary and involuntary ways. Without muscles, one would be completely immobile, unable to blink, walk, or even breathe and pump blood throughout our veins. According to Roy Baumeister, a prominent researcher on the topic, self-control is like a muscle in a number of important respects. First, much like a muscle, self-control is depleted after use. A trainer in a gym will prescribe exercising a group of muscles to exhaustion. The trainer will also prescribe rest periods between exercise sessions so the muscles can develop and grow. After muscles are exerted and fatigued, the body needs some time to rebuild them. This is also the case with self-control. After exercising self-control, a person's willpower is depleted temporarily making it more difficult for them to resist additional temptations.

Second, self-control is like a muscle because the more it is used the stronger it eventually becomes. Depending on nutrition, body type, and frequency of training, improvements in physical strength and stamina are inevitable with a consistent regimen. This is also the case with the “self-control muscle.” Essentially, the well of discipline a person draws from whenever they resist a temptation is emptied in the short term but fills to a greater capacity over time. Research on the brain also links self-control to the prefrontal cortex and related networks that help people plan, focus, and weigh future rewards.

Third, self-control is like a muscle because people have some control over how the energy is expended. People can be more stringent in how they regulate their resources when future demands may tax their willpower. In essence, people know how and when to “keep some in the tank” or conserve their energy for later, more difficult tasks. Indeed, a group of researchers found that people would curtail current performance to a greater degree when they expected to have to exert self-control later on. Similarly, an athlete who is fatigued but still has some energy reserves can persevere and mount a major effort at an important moment during competition.

Extending the analogy further, acquiring self-control in one arena can grant discipline in other areas not related to the one in which self-control has been exercised. For example, smokers who quit remained abstinent for a longer period when they had worked to strengthen their self-control in other areas. This is also similar to physical and athletic ability; an athlete who is transitioning from one sport to another is likely to have an easier time acquiring the skills of the new sport than a person who has never played sports at all. Even without experience in a new sport, an athlete has acquired a general set of useful skills such as strength, flexibility, and kinesthetic awareness.

Lastly, self-control is like a muscle because it requires fuel in order to operate. In the human body, food is converted into glucose to supply the body with fuel for everyday activities. Glucose serves as a primary energy source for the brain. Some researchers once argued that glucose helped explain self-control, but later reviews found that evidence for that idea was weak.

Making Decisions Depletes Self-Control Reserves

When people have used their stores of willpower and energy to exert self-control, their subsequently reduced state has been described by some researchers as ego depletion. Ego depletion is associated with many different activities. For example, controlling one's thoughts, managing one's emotions, refusing to act on unwanted impulses, and focusing attention are all acts of self-control. Managing one's personal impression, dealing with difficult people, and overcoming poor behavior from someone close such as a spouse or child are also ego-depleting. Behaviors like overeating, overspending, aggression, and sexual impulses are affected by one's level of self-control resources. Some studies have linked low self-control after effort to poorer decisions and weaker performance, but researchers still debate how strong and reliable those effects are. Willpower, therefore, is an all-purpose mechanism used for everything from treating people kindly to acting within the confines of the law to sticking to a dietary regimen. When there is something at stake, such as an imminent monetary reward, people are more likely to push through states of ego depletion. Ego depletion can be counteracted with humor and other positive emotions. It can also be dealt with by making implementation plans, that is “if – then” conditions, when faced with a taxing situation. For example, “If someone offers me a piece of cake, then I will just eat two bites and say I'm full.”

Lifestyle Choices

Many successful people credit some of their success to limiting the number of choices they must make in a day. What is it that Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? Despite a few apparent similarities between the two men, they have both made a lifestyle choice that makes their difficult jobs a bit easier to execute. That is, they have described routinely wearing similar outfits to reduce decision-making demands. The founder of Facebook has been criticized for his uninspiring and not entirely professional attire which consists of a t-shirt and blue jeans every day, whether he meets with developers or board members. However, he has shrewdly eliminated one less decision that many people agonize over at least once every day. Similarly, the former president said he wore the same thing every day, either a blue or a gray suit, because, he reported, it was one less decision he had to make enabling him to make the important decisions involved with governing the nation. Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs also reportedly adopted the same strategy of choosing a monotonous wardrobe in order to get more done in a day. Other highly successful people report automating certain aspects of their lives, such as having the same thing for lunch every day, to enable them to preserve the necessary mental resources to deal with important issues they face daily.

Military Style Discipline

The military spends the bulk of a recruit's early training instilling discipline with all-consuming tactics that govern everything from attire and meals to sleep schedules and clothing. According to one journalist turned intelligence officer, “Basic training is the doorway to the military. Civilians enter, and soldiers come out.” The security of a nation depends on soldiers' ability to be in a certain place at an appointed time without fail, carry out orders, and maintain the appropriate physical condition for combat. The military cannot take the chance that a person will put their own needs above those of what is required for duty. Indeed, a person may be ultimately required to sacrifice health and life and would not be expected to do this if they are unable to sacrifice a morning of sleep or an extra piece of cake.

Taking this approach to the extreme, the military assumes that new recruits have no discipline whatsoever and immediately thrusts the individual into a set of rigorous training mechanisms known as basic training. It includes everything the future soldier needs to know for daily life in the military. In addition to the very demanding physical challenges meant to cultivate a high level of fitness, recruits also learn how to properly address ranked officers, clean and maintain personal items and equipment, and function within a chain of command. A successful recruit is one who is in excellent physical condition and who is mentally able to accommodate a variety of circumstances and challenges.

The military also works to instill a sense of pride in caring for one's possessions and appearance. This extends to a strong focus on how cadets carry themselves, how their clothes and gear are cared for; shoes must be shined and particular details of the uniform must be strictly adhered to. Bouncing a quarter off the bed and a neat living environment indicate a crisp and well-organized soldier. The difference between life and death means knowing where the equipment is and that it is functioning properly in the heat of the moment. An individual who cannot be bothered to care for their things or appearance is likely to be sloppy in other arenas as well.

Can Self-Control be Taught or Learned?

Aside from the portion of the population that aspires to military careers, discipline is warranted in most other arenas as well. Long-term substantive success in the workplace, in health and fitness, and in interpersonal relationships all require restraint and deferring immediate gratification in service of a higher, and ultimately more rewarding, set of goals and achievements. It thus behooves families, corporations, and even high school guidance counselors to craft guidelines and support measures that enable their members to learn greater degrees of self-control. These supports should help people build stronger habits, not label them with a score or use them to make high-stakes decisions. In fact, some regimens have been found to increase self-control. People are less depleted by self-control tasks after a two-week period of monitoring their posture and improving it whenever they notice it is sloppy or monitoring and recording everything they eat. Strictly adhering to a rigorous exercise program for a period of two months vastly increased participants' ability to exert self-control and avoid pleasurable, distracting stimuli to maintain focus on laborious tasks. Furthermore, those who adhered to the exercise regimen improved in self-control in areas of their life outside of the laboratory unrelated to physical fitness. Namely, they were better able to regulate their consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine and more likely to perform daily household chores and to study rather than watch television.

Marshmallows Revisited

So what became of those children who were actually able to wait the full amount of time to receive the reward of the second marshmallow? Research showed that these children were linked in early studies to better later academic and social outcomes, though subsequent research found that those links were smaller after family background and other factors were considered.

Bibliography

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